Peer Mentoring by resource teachers in Zimbabwean schools

Mentoring is a learning and instructional strategy that could be used effectively, especially in the area of continuing professional development. The purpose of this study was to determine the potential and the capacity of teachers who function as resource teachers within the Zimbabwean secondary school system to mentor their peers. Nine case studies of active resource teachers were examined through in-depth interviews. It was found that the resource teachers were doing minimal mentoring activity in their everyday work as resource teachers. The activity is mostly in the form of dispensing information and organising workshops and demonstrating instructional strategies. Their potential as mentors could be enhanced by simply improving their work environment, developing critical personality traits that embody humility and ‘a culture to serve others’, and raising the level of professionalism among themselves, their peers, and their school managers through education.     

Is Education Getting Lost in University Mergers?

Mergers are common phenomena in higher education institutions. Improving educational quality is typically one of the stated goals of university mergers. Yet, little information exists about how merging institutions approach this goal. This paper presents results from a study of planning documents created prior to four mergers in the Finnish higher education system. These documents show that there was little concrete attention given to the educational issues related to the mergers. Most attention was placed on administrative issues and issues related to research. When educational issues were mentioned, it was almost always in the form of vague goals with few details provided about how the goals were to be reached. We conclude that this lack of attention to the educational aspect of mergers is a significant weakness of the planning process in these mergers.

     

Collaborative processes in species identification using an internet-based taxonomic resource

Visual databases are increasingly important resources through which individuals and groups can undertake species identification. This paper reports research on the collaborative processes undertaken by pre-service teacher students when working in small groups to identify birds using an Internet-based taxonomic resource. The student groups are conceptualised as ‘knowledge-building communities’ working in a ‘joint problem space’ comprising the collective knowledge of the participants interacting with the taxonomic database. Collaborative group work and associated dialogue were recorded with digital video. The recordings were analysed for the categories of dialogue and the categories of knowledge used by the students as they interacted with the taxonomic database and how they drew on their previous experiences of identifying birds. The outcomes are discussed in the context of the interplay of individual and social processes and the interplay between abstraction and lived experience in the joint problem space.     

Conceptions of teachership in the professional identity construction of adult educator graduates

The aim of this study was to investigate the conceptions of teachership among graduates (n = 126) from a Finnish higher education study programme called Pedagogical Studies for Adult Educators. The conceptions of teachership comprise notions of teaching and of oneself as a teacher. Accordingly, the conceptions of teachership are viewed as one element in the process of constructing teacher identity. Currently, we have little knowledge about the professional identity construction of adult educators, even though there is a growing need for adult pedagogics in the changing professional life. Based on a qualitative thematic analysis of open-ended questionnaire data, three main conceptual categories were identified: (1) teachership as an activity, (2) teachership as a personal disposition, and (3) teachership as a process. It was concluded that in studying teacher identity it is essential to focus on the interplay between the personal and the social. Thus, the findings suggest that in understanding and supporting the construction of teacher identities, one should pay particular attention to the intertwined relationship between individual and collective needs.